On the occasion of my visit to the collection of retro computers HistoryBit, I had the pleasure of meeting Davide Fornasiero, together with his brother Alberto Fornasiero. Davide has always been passionate about vintage technology. He made this documentary, which describes the evolution of calculation, the history of the computer, starting from the sumerian tables and the abacus.
This is the first episode of Davide Fornasiero's documentary on the history of the computer, which starts from the abacus and reaches the electromechanical computers of the late '800.
0/1 A code along millennia
Contemporary man is now used to using supervelocation calculators with natural familiarity, to navigate on the net, communicate with blogs and web.
Who does not feel the desire to move the clock of history back of centuries, if not millennia, making the path taken by man re -emerge from oblivion from the origins?
We start from some primordial calculation form, simply by counting on the fingers. Then, let's move on to the Sumerian tablets, from the abacus and gradually reaching the modern evolution. The genesis of this path, the history of the computer, takes on such an interest, that the news becomes a novel and the research becomes passion. And it is from this kaleidoscope of notes, images, characters, which takes shape and movement this work. Not only do you want to describe the technique, but also the humanity of its protagonists.
The pioneers of calculation
Filosofi, matematici, scienziati si sono addentrati nel mondo dei numeri, avvertendo l'esigenza di meccanizzare il calcolo matematico. L'inizio di questo viaggio nella storia del computer ci fa risalire a circa il 450 a.C. per trovare il primo dei calcolatori numerici: L'Abacus. Questo interessante strumento pare abbia incontrato il favore di molti popoli così da essere via via modificato a seconda delle esigenze di ogni singola cultura. Non si sa quale popolo abbia inventato questa semplice, ma efficace, macchina calcolatrice. Forse i babilonesi, ma diverse interpretazioni dell'Abaco le troviamo anche presso i Maya, gli Aztechi, gli Egiziani, i Cinesi, e perfino presso i Romani. La parola "abaco" viene dal semitico “abaq”, che significa "polvere", "sabbia". Infatti gli abachi più antichi erano tavoli ricoperti da un sottile strato di sabbia sui quali con uno stilo si segnavano i calcoli.
But, despite the various evolutions, the abacus structure is always the same, and consists of a wooden frame equipped with a series of vertical columns on which a number of balls can flow freely. A horizontal element, always in wood, divides the frame into two parts: one superior and one lower. Each ball of the upper section is worth five, while those of the lower section are worth one. Every ball is counted when it moves it towards the separation element between the two sections of the abacus. The most right column is that of the units, that adjacent to the left is that of the dozens, and so on.
Even today, an operator who is familiar with the abacus can maneuver the balls on the rods with enormous calculation speeds. In 1946 a race between an American soldier, a certain Thomas Nathan Wood, and the employee of the Savings Office of the Ministry of Japanese postal administration Kiyoshi Matsuzaki took place. The two had to solve some arithmetic problems. The soldier had a manual -controlled electric calculator, while Matsuzaki the abacus. Matsuzaki always won!
History of the computer, the need for automatic calculation
So wrote the German philosopher and mathematician Leibniz:
"It is not worthy of excellent men to waste hours as slaves to make calculations that could easily be entrusted to someone else if machines were used"
Leibniz's statement reflects how much the need to pier the mathematical calculation was felt in the seventeenth century. Those were years characterized by an intense mathematical, engineering and scientific work that implied calculations and stimulated the use of new algorithms.
So it was in 1600, for example, that Nepero invented a mathematical function today familiar to each student: the "logarithm". Although it was not the invention of a calculating machine, it was however a formidable practical contribution on the road to the automation of complex calculations.
Even the trigonometric functions required to be calculated or perfected, since their use was made necessary by the development of maritime navigation, by astronomical studies, and topographical surveys. In 1900, near Antikithera, a small island located between Greece and the island of Crete, a sponge fisherman found the wreck of a Greek ship.
From the dives that followed, finds of considerable value were reported to light including a strange artifact apparently of stone. Once cleaned of the incrustations, he actually hidden one of the most interesting and mysterious devices of antiquity called "Antikithera mechanism", and traced back between 150 and 100 a.C.
It was used for the astronomical calculation thus allowing to calculate the position of the sun and the moon in a certain period of the year. He also calculated the eclipses and positions of the other planets. With its 23 precision gears, this tool has been unequaled for centuries. Before the man managed to produce something similar had to spend more than 1000 years. It is not known where the antikithera mechanism was built. Recent studies tell us that, in all likelihood, she was originally from Syracuse where Archimedes lived, whose mechanical planetary was also mentioned by Cicero. Unfortunately, no trace of Archimedes has remained.
Computer history, experiments and attempts
Leonardo da Vinci
On February 13, 1967, American researchers made an incredible discovery in the National Library of Spain: they found two unknown works by Leonardo da Vinci, now known as the "Madrid code". A strange device with gears was depicted, conceived, perhaps, to make calculations with the decimal system. The car designed by Leonardo was based on a series of toothed wheels. It should have made it possible to carry out the addition and subtraction operations, but, mechanical friction heavily conditioned the functioning of a possible prototype.
Blaise Pascal
From here begins the path of the pioneers who began the long journey that was to lead to the current computers.
The first mechanical calculator machine saw the light in 1623, by Wilhelm Schickard, and was able to perform the four basic operations. It was unfortunately destroyed during the thirty -year war. It was then in 1642 that the French philosopher Blaise Pascal, that wanting to facilitate the work of the tax inspector of the taxes he created, without knowing Schickard's work, such a machine capable of making only additions and subtractions.
This machine was called "La Pascaline", in Italian "Pascaline". It was composed of a series of toothed wheels indicating the units, the dozens, the hundreds and so on, and each was divided into ten sectors from 0 to 9. Its operation was somewhat simple: to perform the sum 9 + 3, the wheel of the units was imposed on 9 and it was made by 3 positions. Thus a 2 was obtained on the wheel of the units and another 1 on the wheel of the dozens that were automatically rotated. From some gears, providing the number 12 result of the operation.
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz, German philosopher and mathematician, designed a more advanced calculating machine than that of Pascal. It was 1664. His contribution to the history of calculation is fundamental. He was responsible for the discovery of the binary numbering system on which the operation of all modern computers is based. He showed that with the binary system the execution of multiplication takes place through addition and in 1683 he conceived a multiplier machine based on this principle. The binary numbering system is mentioned by Leibniz in a manuscript dated March 15, 1679. In it a medal he designed is reproduced which, curiously, connects the binary numbering to theology. At the top it was written to it:
"One created everything from nothing", and below "One is necessary."
Gottfried Leibniz certainly could not predict that the binary numbering would be essential for the realization of the calculators, but the ease with which it is possible to represent a 1 or a 0 in electronics made the choice of this system almost automatic. In Leibniz's car, what took the name of "Leibniz wheel" was used which stored the result of an operation in a totalizing register that gradually "accumulates" the result until its total value. This mechanism made it possible to perform multiplication according to the simple but long -lived principle of the repeated investigation. 4 x 3 = 12, is calculated as 4 + 4 + 4 = 12. The principle used by Leibniz was in turn taken up and improved in 1820 by the French Charles Xavier de Colmar in his "arrhythmometer".
At first glance the mechanism of Pascal and Leibniz proves to be learned with the watch mechanisms. The clock mechanism is linked by two ways to the history of the elaborator. On the one hand, the computer is a cybernetic machine. Cybernetics has its ancestors in the automatons of the past centuries, while the other point where history intersects with that of the elaborator, concerns technological evolution. The construction of monumental watches, with automatic autonomic tools or more complex astronomical tools and, in parallel, of ever smaller and more precise portable watches, brings precision mechanics to a very high level. The watchmaking, therefore, arrived at the height of its development, thus leaves a precious technological inheritance to the emerging discipline of automatic calculation.
Giovanni Poleni
To Giovanni Poleni, Venetian marquis, scientist and professor at the University of Padua, the merit for the realization of the first mechanical calculator invented and made in Italy goes. The history of the computer continues. Poleni had the idea of exploiting, as a "engine", a weight similar to that used in pendulum watches. It was a weight linked to a rope wrapped on an axis. As he descended, he rotated the axis and then gave the movement to the whole calculator.
Operation.
The core of the machine is represented by the "transposer", A wheel equipped with attractive teeth that interacts with small ten fixed teeth gears, said accumulators. Therefore, to set the figures on the transposition, the teeth equivalent to the number to be elaborated. At each rotation the accumulators advance according to the raised teeth on the transposition. Each complete lap of an accumulator (ten teeth, equivalent to ten), Automatically advance a tooth of the subsequent accumulator, thus carrying out the reporting operation.
This first specimen was in fact a complete machine that could have given great results if it had not had a great flaw. They were mechanical devices and as such they required to be built with a certain precision. Unfortunately, the knowledge of mechanical technology of the time were certainly not able to solve these problems and proved to be completely inadequate for practical uses. In the first printed work by Giovanni Poleni, published towards the end of 1709 at the publisher Aloisio Pavino, entitled "Miscellanea", he reported these three different topics on the front page:
1 – A dissertation on barometers and thermometers
2 – The description of an arithmetic machine and its use
3 – A treatise on conical sections and their use in the sundial project
The second section of the miscellany therefore deals with the first Italian mechanical calculator.
The history of the computer also passes through negative events. It is said that, when the Italian scientist learned that a certain Braun presented King Charles VI with a machine similar to the one he designed, the disappointment was such that he destroyed his masterpiece in a thousand pieces. Luck wanted that the drawings and construction methods contained in Poleni's book, the famous "Miscellaneous", reached the present day.
Joseph Marie Jacquard
In this long research path, to get to speed up the calculation machines, we saw the commitment of scholars, physicists, mathematicians and philosophers.
But, to make an important contribution to the development of calculators and the history of the computer, it will be a modest Lionese weaver: Joseph Marie Jacquard. He had the intuition of using perforated cards for his frames.
The holes suitably prepared on the cards made it possible to program the locks of the frame. The perforated cards contained the work of the weavers, permanently. Each card reproduced a segment of the entire design by means of a series of perforations. The presence of the hole made it possible to insert a certain thread in the warp, while the absence of the dingdom excluded the insertion of that thread.
The drawing to be reproduced on a drape was thus decoded on a series of perforated cards, which were then joined to each other. Thus, the whole drawing on what we would call a tape was obtained. Jacquard, in 1801, managed to patent his frame. The Lionesi weavers, in fear that innovation would put their work at risk, destroyed the frame and opposed its inventor in every way.
Despite the difficulties two years later, in 1803, the importance of his work was recognized. Joseph Marie Jacquard was called to Paris, at the Conservatory of Arts and Mestieri, with the task of continuing to perfect his project.
History of the computer, the pioneers
Charles Babbage
In the history of automatic calculation, a singular figure is now encountered, which first had the intuition of the concept of calculator: the English mathematician Charles Babbage. Very intelligent, full of brilliant ideas, it was successful in numerous fields of activity. His suggestion to make the headlights identify for navigation periodically concealing the light; Simple but effective idea to be applied still to the present day.
He suggested simplifying the postal service by establishing a fixed port and independent of the distance at which a letter had to arrive. A few years later on these arguments Sir Rowland Hill introduced the stamp. He invented the first speedometer, claiming that there was one to be one in the cabin of each locomotive. Babbage, as all scholars of the time, made extensive use of mathematical tables, and was in front of one of one of the latter, full of logarithms, which indicating with his finger, told a friend:
"I think all these tables could be calculated by machine."
Since then this brilliant man was possessed by the dream of building a machine capable of automatically carrying out any arithmetic operation. To this end he devoted the years from 1824 until his death in 1871.
To remedy the inaccuracies and errors of the numerical tables, such as those of logarithms, Charles Babbage built the prototype of a first machine which he called "differential machine". This project proved so interesting that the British government granted him a funding of 1500 pounds that he allowed him to continue the work. In 1824 the Royal Astronomical Society gave him the gold medal.
Unfortunately, for the inadequacy of the technologies of the time, and despite the commitment of its inventor, the machine was never completed. And, in 1833, the British government also revoked its funding.
However, Charles Babbage, with firm determination, continued his studies in order to design and create a new machine capable of carrying out any arithmetic operation and to solve any mentally conceivable arithmetic problem in principle. Thus he designed a second much more complex machine: the "analytical machine" based on a perforated cards program. There, the fundamental parts of a modern calculator could already be recognized.
Operation:
According to Babbage's design, the Analytical machine was supposed to consist of four fundamental sections:
Un'arithmetic unit, which is the organ that performs the individual operations called "Mill" or Mulino.
The central memory where the data resided called "store" or warehouse.
The input section composed of a card reader, inspired by those of Jacquard frames.
The output section for printing outgoing data.
The memory for the input numbers and for the intermediate results would consist of several columns composed of toothed wheels that had ten positions, corresponding to the ten decimal figures. The data were transferred from the central memory to the arithmetic unit where it was possible to perform one of the four arithmetic operations with a mechanical procedure. In each elementary instruction the number stored on a column could be combined according to one of the four operations with that of another column and the result placed on a third column. A program was therefore made up of a sequence of elementary instructions that specified the arithmetic operations to be carried out on the initial or partial data. The whole calculation process, or rather the program, had to be coded through the holes appropriately prepared on the perforated cards. The latter were divided by Babbage into:
Card Number: where the holes represented the different digits of a number.
Variable Card: where the memory cells (i.e. a given column of wheels) were specified from which to take a numerical data to be processed or deposited after processing it.
Operation Card: where instructions for operating on the data were specified.
The architecture of Babbage's calculator is therefore comparable to that of today's calculators. In fact, we find the calculation unit or arithmetic unit CPU (mill), the central memory unit (warehouse) and the entrance and exit units (perforated cards and printing device) conceptually similar to modern input/output devices (keyboards and printers).
Being a very complex mechanism, Babbage made only a few parts of the analytical machine. Subsequently, he abandoned the project for lack of funds. In addition to the few parties built, we have also been handed down a detailed description by an Italian, Count Federico Luigi Menabrea.
It happened that Menabrea, scientist, expert in mathematical engineering as well as a member of the Academy of Sciences of Turin, in 1840 he listened to a series of conferences held by Babbage in the Piedmontese city in order to illustrate his projects and propagate the interest in calculating machines in scientific and engineering environments.
Luigi Menabrea was fascinated by Babbage's ideas and intentions. He collected, studied and reconstructed the ideas he heard. Two years later he published a report in French, "Notion sur la machine analytique de Charles Babbage" which is the best technical description we have left of the analytical machine.
The text a few months later was resumed to be translated into English and greatly expanded by Ada Augusta Lovelace (daughter of Lord Bairon), a talented collaborator of Babbage. According to the beautiful image given by Lady Lovelace, as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves, so Babbage proposed to weave algebraic designs to the analytical machine.
She is said that she herself proposed a "program" for the calculation of Bernouli numbers with Babbage's car. This earned her the title of first programmer in the history of the computer. One of the most recent programming languages is called Ada, in honor of Lady Lovelace. So what was the intuition that made Babbage famous?
The revolutionary idea was to conceive in the mid -19th century the logical and functional scheme applied, more than 100 years later, to electronic calculators and to predict the use of perforated cards for the first time. Only in 1975, the floppies disk replaced the perforated cards. The analytical machine therefore represents the culmination of the man in the field of calculating machines for the 800.
Herman Hollerith, the history of the computer
If Charles Babbage was the inspirer of the current electronic calculators, Herman Hollerith was the inventor of traditional mechanographic machines. In the history of the computer, these two men begin the technique of data processing.
Already in the nineteenth century, the United States of America carried out the census of the population in a serious and meticulous way. However, data processing required so long that a new census often had to start without the examination of the previous one.
So it was that the American government, for the census of 1890, promoted research to find a system for automatic processing of the data collected. The best idea had the statistical engineer Herman Hollerith who had processed a tabulator, not to specify the program, but the data to be elaborated.
He did not reuse the idea of Babbage, but had the intuition by observing a ticket officer who perforated railway tickets with his machine. Each perforated card reported the data provided by each individual or family unit. In fact, each hole represented a precise answer to a questionnaire question for the census. For example, the male or female sex of an individual was represented respectively with a hole or with the absence of the hole.
The latter could only be opened or closed and it was therefore logical to relate them to the digits of the binary system 1 or 0. Electromagnetic machines, designed by himself, were able to read these cards.
Operation:
It is interesting to describe how "cards of cards" worked. In particular, a card was divided into 288 areas that represented the personal data.
To decode this information, an appliance with a battery of retractable needles was overlapped. In the absence of perforation, the cardboard stopped the needle. Otherwise, the needle ended up in a tray full of mercury, closing the circuit (mercury is in fact a good electricity conductor).
The current passed into a thread, operating a relay, which made one of the 40 meters by a shot (the counters allowed to add the data of the various categories). Next to the reading and counting device, the operator had a chest of drawers, called "Uncolonnator". A hole on the card closed a certain contact, automatically commanding the doors of the chest of drawers.
The operator, putting the card developed on the counter automatically open from the device, thus grouped the cards homogeneously. It was the first time that, in the calculation, electricity was used.
A curious note is the format of the cards: they had the same shape as a banknote from a dollar of that time, to facilitate deposits. The upper angle was cut diagonally. The main reason for the cut corner was to prevent the card from being inserted on the contrary. If the card was inserted in the reader incorrectly, it went to hit a lever. This activated a micro switch and stopped the car until the operator revolved the card correctly, as required by the system.
The device had a huge success; It was possible to examine up to 800 cards per minute (a fabulous speed for those times and impossible to men) and the result was amazing because it was possible to process, in a few months, all the data of 62 million Americans, saving the government 5 million dollars compared to the previous census of 1880 whose processing lasted 7 years. Hollerith, in 1896 he founded his company: the "Tabulating Machine Company", one of the columns on which, after 28 years, the most important and famous of IT companies would have arisen: the International Business Machine; the IBM.
This is the first part of the documentary on the history of the computer, created by Davide Fornasiero of HistoryBit.